FEATURE: How an East Asian girl prevented Noel Gallagher from ending Oasis in 1994

The identity of the girl who saved Oasis from breaking up in 1994 has been revealed, and she just happens to be East Asian.

Back in 1994, Oasis were the biggest band in the UK and one of the biggest bands in the world. Having just released their platinum-selling debut album, Definitely Maybe, Oasis were on their global tour, conquering the world with their galvanising rock n roll, cocky attitudes, and shameless monobrows. During their American leg, brothers Noel and Liam Gallagher engaged in what would later manifest into a recurring theme – a sibling rivalry and violent feud.

After a gig at LA’s Whisky a Go Go, tensions rose between the brothers. High on crystal meth, the younger Gallagher hurled a tambourine at brother Noel’s face. Consequently, songwriter and older brother Noel grabbed his passport from the tour manager and said, “right, that’s it. I’m fucking out of here”, according to Gallagher in the Lock The Box interview.

Three days prior to Gallagher’s “lost week’, as he described it, he met Melissa Lim, who would unbeknownst to him at the time, would later convince him to return to Liam and stay with the band.

Lim recalls the first time she locked eyes with Gallagher at the Bottom of the Hill on 26 September 1994.

“He came over and sat down next to me,” she says. “I had never been backstage before, so I asked him, ‘Where’s the afterparty?’ And he goes, ‘What afterparty? Can I hang out with you tonight?’”

Gallagher took refuge in Lim’s apartment in lower Nob Hill in San Fransisco.

“He was very upset,” she says. “I took him in, fed him and tried to calm him down. He wanted to break up the band.”

“We went to Huntington Park to clear his mind,” Lim says. “We listened to music. We went record shopping.”

Lim recalls bringing back a handful of British music magazines, as well as her usual batch of Snapple strawberry lemonade.

“San Francisco has a reputation of being a place where bands come to die, like the Band and the Sex Pistols,” says Lim.

“I wasn’t going to let it happen on my watch. I told him, ‘You can’t leave the band — you’re on the verge of something big.’”

Speaking about Lim, Gallagher once said, “I met up with this girl and she was going ‘you’d be fucking mad [to leave] if it’s all blowing up over there'”. However, her visual memory of her is slightly foggier, “If I close my eyes now, I can’t even picture the girl,” he said in the latest film about Oasis, Supersonic, “I can’t remember her name.”

Nonetheless, Oasis folk law has long said that the girl with whom Noel sought refuge in 1994 was the inspiration for ‘Talk Tonight’. Gallagher himself confirmed that he wrote ‘Talk Tonight’ and ‘Half The World Away’ during his “lost week”. Taking a look at the lyrics to ‘Talk Tonight’ and the details of Lim’s story, it seems pretty clear that not only did Lim save the band, but she also inspired the melancholy Oasis acoustic classic.

“All your dreams are made,
Of strawberry lemonade,
And you make sure I eat today,
You take me walking,
To where you played when you were young.”

On the chorus, Gallagher sings, “I want to talk tonight/ Until the mornin’ light/ ’Bout how you saved my life.”

Lim also claims that she kept in contact with Gallagher as the tour continued. Speaking regularly on the phone, Lim would answer the call with the Bye Bye Birdie phrase, “What’s The Story, Morning Glory?”. When Oasis returned to San Fransico to perform at the Fillmore in 1995, Lim said Gallagher was being distant. In an effort to maintain their relationship, she said to him, “it’s OK, I won’t look back in anger. I know we’re just friends.”

One year later, Oasis would release their four-time-platinum second album titled (What’s The Story) Morning Glory?, which included the anthemic ‘Don’t Look Back In Anger’.

Who’d have thought that an East Asian girl was the glue that cemented the bedrock of one of the world’s biggest rock and roll bands?

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Cohan has written for online publications including the Huffington Post, Gigwise, Time Out Singapore, The Metropolist, Zoo, We Plug Good Music and Redstar Qingdao. He has developed an insight into the East Asian community in the UK from his work at the British Chinese Project, an NGO that promotes political participation for the Chinese in the UK.